RCCrawler Forums - New Charger and New Battery...and I'm lost?

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New Charger and New Battery...and I'm lost?

Bare with here comes some newbie questions........

I bought a MegaVolt 4100 Stick battery for my Slash and came to find out that my current charger wouldn't charge it. So I talked to my LHS and they recommended the Duratrax Intelli Peak Pulse Charger. It was a good price so thats my setup now. Except neither the battery or charger has any instructions.

The charger came with a very vague sheet on its use. It said I need to slow charge the new pack at 1amp or less for it's first charge. Then it goes on to say that a 100MaH should take 15hours so by that my 4100 should take 41 hours? I don't get it. So right now the new 4100 has been sitting charging for about 17 hours at .5 amps.

Then once it's been charged how do I normally charge it? The knob only say 3 amps for NimH battery's yet I charge my 1500 Nimah crawler packs at 8amps on my other charger. On this model charger it shows I can only go to 3 amps on a NimH and anything higher should be a NiCd. Any suggestions/instructions would be appreciated. I'm gonna try and get over and talk to the shop I got it from but I'm trying here first.

just as reference this is the charger I got
http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/3...304839clx5.jpg

You should be able to download the manual for that charger here:

http://www.duratrax.com/pdf/index.html

Actually........yours is here:

http://manuals.hobbico.com/dtx/dtxp4100-manual-v1_2.pdf

Quote:

Originally Posted by MtnMan210 (Post 1235827)

yet I charge my 1500 Nimah crawler packs at 8amps on my other charger.

:shock:

Don't do that. Charge those at no more than 1C, meaning 1x their capacity. Meaning 1.5 amps. They're fragile cells and you're killing them charging them at a high rate.

You should charge your 4100 at 4.1 amps, if you can. But just skimming the instruction sheet it says not to go above 3 amps. So maybe stick to 3 amps.

Slower, lower amperage charging treats the batteries much better than high amp settings.

Quote:

Originally Posted by EeePee (Post 1235841)

:shock: Slower, lower amperage charging treats the batteries much better than high amp settings.

I use the same charger and I charge my NiMHs at .05 it takes a little longer but I get really long run times from my packs. :D "The slower you charge them the longer the run time".

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stormin2u (Post 1235867)

I use the same charger and I charge my NiMHs at .05 it takes a little longer but I get really long run times from my packs. :D "The slower you charge them the longer the run time".

Damn, .05? That's a long time to wait. I would only charge at .05 if I was trying to balance my cells.

If they are nimh, use the 1C guide; 1500 @ 1.5 and 4100 @ 4.1. You will not have a problem with that guideline and you should have less than an hour of charging time.